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What are they? What do they have to do with genealogy?
Colleen Greene, MLISRootsTech Conference | Salt Lake City, Utah | February 13, 2015
This work is licensed by Colleen Greene under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.www.colleengreene.com
Librarian: Systems, Academic, Newsroom, Public
Web Developer: Wordpress, OU Campus, Omeka, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, XML, XSL
Content Strategist: Information Architecture, Marketing, Public Relations, SEO, Social Media
Genealogist & Historian API & Mashups Nerd
@colleengreene
Tech-interested non-coders Code-dabblers (no heavy lifting required) Programmers & coders who want to learn how to
explain APIs to real people Those who want to try out API sessions at future
RootsTech conferences Those who want to learn how real people would like to
be able to use APIs
My Website & Tutorials: www.colleengreene.com
Updated syllabus & slides: http://bit.ly/cgreene-rootstech2015
Practice “Sandbox” Facebook Group (through March): https://www.facebook.com/groups/apis101.rootstech2015/
New REAL Facebook Group: New “APIs for Genealogy” Facebook Group (permanent): https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogyapis/
Your IFTTT account
Learning how to confidently talk like a web nerd
How many of you use APIs?
How many are confident you use APIs?
How many aren’t sure if you use APIs? How often do you use APIs?
A few times a year?
Monthly? A few times a month?
Daily? Throughout the day?
Application Programming Interface Allows systems to talk to each other Allows systems to open and share data Allows systems to open & share functionality Allows 3rd party applications to be built upon a
particular system
Web Service: A method of communication between two electronic devices over a network (Wikipedia)
Mashup: A web page or a web application that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface (Wikipedia)
CRUD: In computer programming, create, read, update and delete (Wikipedia) [think in terms of actions on records]
Protocols: How data is packaged and exchanged between systems, SOAP+XML vs. REST+JSON [think in terms of different formats of Gedcom]
Breaks down data silos Real-time*
interoperability
“Easy” data exchange > sharing & syncing
Vs. Database export/import (think Gedcom)
Everyone doesn’t have to keep reinventing the wheel
Fun cool multimedia mashups
Mobile, mobile, mobile Apps, apps, apps
*Not necessarily instantaneous; can set limits.
Can you guess the most popular API?
NEVER just “set it and forget it” ALWAYS changing > can break your site or workflow Can disappear at ANY time Terms of Use can change at ANY time Can be limits placed on the number of records or
transactions over time NEVER make my examples your sole backup solution
(one tool in toolbox)
YES, unless want data to remain in silos YES, if want your data-driven product to remain
relevant in the market YES, for the same reasons that FREE tools like
Wordpress, Blogger, Facebook, Google Drive, etc. are worth it
YES, if like me, you like to get your nerd on
Remixing and repurposing content and functionality
Facebook social sharing button uses Facebook’s Graph API, which ensures that that my blog post’s featured image, title, and crafted excerpt are displayed on Facebook.
Custom Google Mapembedded in a post on my family history blog.
Any changes I make to the map automatically get updated on my blog.
Must be a public map.
Data entered in Darren Lythgoe’s TNG site dynamically populates a custom Google Map for each of his ancestors.
Data is not entered via the map itself.
YouTube videoembedded into a post on my family history blog.
Flickr photo slideshowembedded into a post on my family history blog.
FAQs from my library’s LibAnswers knowledge base are fed to related pages on our library website, and are dynamically updated by Google Analytics.
Exploration & fun, preservation & access, productivity, storytelling
If This, Then That Runs completely off APIs Learn and visualize the concepts of APIs, without having
to know how to code Will provide you with some practical everyday
productivity applications for doing, sharing, and preserving your genealogy
Sign up for a free account
TIP: Create this in a folder or notebook that is shared with your board members, conference team, or marketing team.
#FGS2015
View My public Dropbox file
View my Recipe Template (Uses Dropbox)
Make your own blog posts part of your research or how-to notes system, you put a lot of work and time into those posts!
Ever deleted an old blog, and then wish you hadn’t?
Want to delete an old long-neglected blog, but don’t want to lose the information in those old posts?
It isn’t perfectly formatted, but it does the job!• Adds in extra blank
lines between paragraphs
• Forces all images to left-align
View my Evernote file
Each new Blogger post creates a new Evernote note
View my Evernote file
Self-hosted Wordpress blog post to new Evernote note
It isn’t perfectly formatted, but it does the job!• Note that my blog RSS feed
is displaying the Wordpress Featured Image twice.
• Adds in extra blank lines between paragraphs
• Forces all images to left-align
Surname categories/labels or to surname Groups
Place categories/labels to place-based Groups
Interest group categories/labels to interest Groups
What to notice:• No blog images• Different Recipes link in
different manners to the original blog post
Testing two different Recipes
You are welcome to play along!
Must be authenticated in IFTTT with Instagram and Facebook
Please post photos to Instagram using #RootsTech
Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/apis101.rootstech2015/
Must be authenticated in IFTTT with Facebook Might need to be made a Group admin Must be authenticated into your Evernote/Dropbox/Drive Post more #RootsTech Instagram photos or post in the
Facebook Group
Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/apis101.rootstech2015/
Some channels only allow one account to be linked (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Wordpress, Blogger)
Not all channels support 2-way exchanges (i.e., can only post to Evernote)
A recipe can only include 1 trigger, but can set up sequential recipes (i.e., iOS Photos > Dropbox, Dropbox > Evernote)
Many recipes do the same thing or with just a slight variation > test several at a time until you find your favorite (set up sandbox sites or folders)
So, where do you go from here?
Interested in a hands-on computer lab next year at RootsTech, or a hands-on workshop at another conference?
Interested in a facilitated Q&A session at RootsTech next year for regular genealogists and the vendor API developers present, to share your ideas, questions, or frustrations?
Interested in a series of Google Hangouts? Give this feedback to RootsTech and FGS, email me , or
share your interests in the new “APIs for Genealogy” Facebook Group.
Email: [email protected] Twitter: @colleengreene New Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogyapis/
New “APIs for Genealogy” Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogyapis/
Colleen’s website / blog / tutorials: www.colleengreene.com
Lynda.com (see syllabus for specific courses) MOOCs & web tutorials (see syllabus for specific links) Programmable Web (blogging about all things APIs)
